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Bluejay Transport
Confederate Bluejay Transport Air cav on call! :- Common radio greeting by Bluejay pilots Tactical Analysis * Screamin' Eagles: The Bluejay Transport is a versatile military helicopter dating back to WW2. It is capable of carrying 4 Confederate soldiers with ease and transporting them quickly across the battlefield. The Bluejay Transport is by itself, unarmed. However, it has fireports that enable troops inside to fire out. * Death from above: The options for filling Bluejays are quite varied. Filled with Minutemen, it is the best interceptor the Confederates will ever get. Fill it with Marksmen for anti infantry work, or even put Dixie in it and really go to town. * No discounts: The Bluejay is very expensive, especially if it is carrying a full load; Losing a fully loaded Bluejay is usually a big setback. * No Frills Please: The crews of Bluejays are still highly disciplined former US Army soldiers, and unofficial modifications are still frowned upon by their superiors. Operational History When the United States joined with the Allies for World War II, they brought along with men and supplies a whole new branch of warfare. Within days, the Soviets feared the American 5th Airborne Cavalry. Soviet tank units couldn't fight helicopters when they flew above them, nullifying the Soviets main advantage. MiGs could shoot them down, but at this point the Allies were gaining air superiority. Soviet bases often fell when Allied soldiers were dropped into the centre of them. At other times they hovered above battlefields, where soldiers inside gunned down Soviet troops who were unable to effectively respond. The air cavalry units often conducted operations to rescue Allied soldiers trapped behind enemy lines, raising morale and saving skilled soldiers and pilots. The air cavalry's mount was the Bluejay Helicopter, one of the first transport helicopters ever made. After the war, the Peacekeepers excelled at the air cavalry concept, mounted in the modern Cardinal, so the 5th Airborne Cavalry was sent back to their home base in Idaho, where they sat out World War 3, waiting to be activated. The 5th's commander, Brigadier General Collins, saw this as a mild insult, but nothing compared to his commander in chief and fellow Idahoan, Howard Ackerman, being attacked by Allied usurpers. The 5th sped to join Ackerman at Mount Rushmore, but arrived too late, though the 5th did evacuate the few loyalists left. Refusing the order to turn himself in, and fully supported by his men, Brigadier General Collins and the former 5th deserted from duty, moving whenever Peacekeepers came near and scavenging supplies any way they could. When they heard the Federalist Party was rising up against the Allied occupiers, the former 5th flew to Dallas to join them. Almost immediately, Peacekeepers were being hit by airborne cavalry attacks when they advanced without air cover. Icarus Platforms had to be transferred from Europe to the United States to protect endangered units, which themselves were vulnerable to Confederate ground troops. While currently the rogue military unit is wanted by the US Army to be courtmartialed for desertation of their posts, to this day the former 5th is a fast, hard hitting punch to the Confederate cause, and even one helicopter can be enough to turn the tide against the Allied aggressors. Behind the Scenes The Bluejay is based on the Bell HSL anti-submarine helicopter. ARVN Bluejay Transport Background Heavily forested jungle poses a problem for forces operating in Vietnam. While some, like the Vietcong, have been able to turn the thick jungle to their advantage, others have found it difficult to move through the jungle terrain; if one doesn't know one's way around, it's easy to get lost in a jungle. Mobility and vision are impeded, and Vietnam's jungle is filled with all manner of hazards for the average ARVN soldier, be it wild animals or Vietcong. Moving through the jungle on foot is slow and treacherous, and while vehicles are faster and offer more protection, the risk of ambush is still there, and there is also the chance that a vehicle might get stuck. For this reason, the ARVN Rangers and the Peacekeepers prefer to use helicopters for transportation. South Vietnam, however, possessed no indigenous aircraft designs of their own, which meant that they would have to acquire their transport helicopters from somewhere else. Fortunately, the Allied Nations were willing to provide aid and assistance, and through leases and sales of helicopters, the ARVN were able to acquire a sizable fleet. In particular, the ARVN was able to get hold of a decently-sized fleet of old Bluejay Transports when the Allies phased most of them out in favour of the newer Cardinals. These Bluejays proved capable of transporting troops over long distances faster than any ground vehicle, and didn't have to worry about terrain, letting the ARVN shuttle soldiers across kilometres of jungle, whether to bring fresh troops to the frontlines or to evacuate wounded back to base. Of course, there are still a number of dangers for a passenger riding in an ARVN Bluejay. It is impossible to see through the thick canopy of the Vietnam jungle, even from the excellent vantage point that a Bluejay Transport provides. Worse, the Bluejay is vulnerable to anti-air weapons; a soldier armed with an RPGL-6, using the jungle for cover, could bring down a Bluejay and all its passengers with a single well aimed shot. The addition of .50 cal Brownings has helped compensate for this to some extent, letting the Bluejay helicopters fire back at would be attackers; additionally, the machine guns also allow them to provide fire support for ARVN forces. Even so, dozens of Bluejays have been brought down this way by Vietcong resistance fighters. Recently, with the Allies being able to provide additional aid now that the Third World War has ended, the South Vietnamese Air Force has been bolstered with additional Bluejays, in addition to a number of more modern Cardinal helicopters. The relatively small number of Cardinal helicopters in South Vietnam's possession, however, has meant that it has not been used as a replacement transport for the Bluejay; instead the ARVN has used the smaller and nimbler helicopters as armed gunships, while continuing to use the larger Bluejays as transports. Just the Stats Category:Units Category:Vietnam Category:Units Originating from the United States